Chromebook owners will soon be able to know if their USB-C cable has limited functionality with Google's latest Chromebook update, the company announced on Friday.
It seems like this new Chromebook feature could be a useful tool to help troubleshoot issues with USB-C cables that have widely varying capabilities, such as different charging and data transfer speeds.
Google says in a blog post that Chromebooks that support USB-C will alert you if you're using a cable that doesn't work well with your laptop.
According to the blog, "you'll also get a notification if the cable you're using doesn't support the high-speed USB4 / Thunderbolt 3 standards your Chromebook supports." According to the blog, "more devices will be added over time."
With Google employee Benson Leung making waves with his testing and reviews of USB-C cables, including a cable that destroyed his Chromebook Pixel, Google is well aware of the challenges of USB-C cables.
While things have improved since then, it can still be difficult to tell which USB-C cable does what, so this new notification from Google is a welcome addition to its Chromebooks. Unsurprisingly, we can thank Benson and the rest of the team for making this possible.
Several new features are also included in the new update. Google is updating the split-screen magnifier feature so that you can resize the magnified part of the screen, allowing you to choose whether you want to see more or less of the zoomed-in area. You can see how that works in this GIF from Google:
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